Monday, June 20, 2005

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken a bold stand against electoral reform in California. If he truly had the least interest in such a thing, he would not be putting all of his bets on a ballot initiative. He would be working with the Legislature to at least attempt to create a workable compromise for making the 2012 redistricting process, and all future redistricting, occur in a transparent non-partisan atmosphere of mutual trust on all sides, not trying to ram through a blatantly lopsided Republican plan in an artificial partisan hurry.

It's the same tactic that the pro-automobile, pro-big-oil lobby used to kill Saturday closure in Golden Gate Park. Propositions F and G, the two Saturday closure props that faced off in November 2000 and each failed with a 38+% vote, each contained "poison-pill" provisions to kill the other. For that reason, very few citizens voted "yes-yes." A small number voted "no-no," and large numbers voted either "yes-no" or "no-yes." That was enough to bamboozle Matier and/or Ross into stating falsely that the majority of the people of San Francisco voted against Saturday closure of JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park.

Governor Schwarzenegger's redistricting proposition is nothing but a smokescreen to conceal the fact that he considers our state's democracy to be less important than a game of craps.